It was an average Monday morning at Amun Academy in September. It was the start of term and there was nothing going on in the school. Many of the students from the boarding houses had established that they were going to try and sleep in until the people in charge of each of their houses would force them out of bed, because deep down a couple of extra hours in bed was well worth missing one of the lessons that they detested.
It was on this average Monday morning that Mrs Dalton sat in her new office. She'd been hired a few weeks prior to the start of term and as she sat in her office, she was determined to make sure that she was prepared for the classes of the day.
She'd been well versed in teaching but she didn't know any of the students at Amun Academy. She'd come out of retirement due to her divorce with her husband and now she was determined to bring everything back to her career at Amun Academy. She had been lucky to be hired or so she thought but in the mere first few hours she was nervous that the class wouldn't gel with her.
She knew it was stupid but she couldn't really expect the students to like her when they didn't know her. She wasn't the type of teacher to teach without developing a personal bond with her students, for how could you be a good teacher when you didn't know them? It was a preposterous idea that she had heard many of her colleagues in previous schools speak about.
She wanted to form a bond with each one of her students and as she examined the previous exam papers of the year thirteen class that she had taken over, she was looking for both their strengths and for the most part, the majority of their weaknesses. She would target them in turn, making sure that she wouldn't let them suffer with their mental health for grades.
Because who really cares if you scrape an A* when you feel like dying? She did and she was determined that this class she was teaching would be confident that they could reach out for help if they needed too.
She sat in her office having flicked through the exam papers of the students and she had decided that they needed to be retaught Shakespeare's Othello. It was a tricky text to master and even in the event that it was known inside out, it was an even trickier text to write about. The extract question was hell and the open question about thematics or character studies could completely ruin the best student in the final exam.
There was one student however that had seemed to beat the rest of the class within their knowledge and that was a girl by the name of Joy Mercer.
Mrs Dalton glanced over Joy's papers and smiled. She knew the subject well and yet there were certainly some areas where she would be able to improve. She knew that girls like Joy were normally the ones that improved the least but to Mrs Dalton, she was certain that this would be an opportunity for her to work with a student in the highest target grade demographic.
A simple shrug of her shoulders and then the bell was ringing for the first class. She looked over the year nines as they entered her class and grinned at them all in turn. She would have to get through the lesson with the year nines in order to teach the year thirteens. The first class went through smoothly and as Mrs Dalton reviewed their work at the end of class, she was oh so determined to highlight the strengths in their writing.
But one of the stories that she'd presented to the class had stuck in her mind. It was a story that held a lot of character and printed in the prose was the spell-binding story of a house that wouldn't sleep and residents that refused to give up.
Then the bell rang and she had to stand up and get ready to teach again. "Good morning year thirteen, I'm Mrs Dalton and I'm your new english literature teacher. I can't wait for us to work together this year and I believe that all of you have the potential to get the best grades."
She went through the register in order and shrugged as she reached Joy's name. "Joy Mercer?"
There was no response to Mrs Dalton's question too see if anyone had seen Joy. "Has anyone seen Joy Mercer," she asked once more and then she simply moved on.
She didn't know what was happening to Joy but she was determined that one day, she would find out this students' abilities and she would arrange a meeting. She wanted to be there for her student and one of those that would get A*'s in the exam, but she also wanted to make sure that she knew that she was not alone.
Mrs Dalton remembered that as a teenager, she'd often skipped class and if it wasn't for the education that her parents fought for her to maintain, she wouldn't have listened to them and stayed at school.
"Miss," one of the year thirteens asked.
"Yes Patricia," she was struggling to remember the names of the students in her class, but she knew Patricia from a past relationship with her grandson in year twelve.
She didn't really understand Patricia but she knew that she was head of the newspaper society and wanted it to be for the better if she was to avoid the stubborn question on Patricia's lips.
"Why does Desdemona die?"
"Desdemona?" Mrs Dalton smiled. "It shows that even those with innocence get hurt. She did nothing wrong." And that answer seemed good enough.
"But why? Shakespeare's intention is always, 'women are in the wrong?' and I think that makes him sexist.
"It's a mans' world Patricia," was all she replied.
It was just another average Monday morning when Mrs Dalton tried to fire off an email to Joy, asking her if she wanted the scheme of work.
Yet as she typed in Joy's name into the staff website, she was surprised to realise that no results came up. And as she left her year thirteens to debate the role of the stage in Miller's Death of A Salesman, she was determined to find out what had happened to Joy.
